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I was searching for a cover letter I sent to a job recently, and searching for "cover letter" returned no results, even though the file is named "cover letter.doc". Luckily I remembered something else in the text of the note that I could search for.

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Good to know, but I didn't know I had an attachment named that. I only knew that I had a cover letter in Evernote somewhere. I could have just as easily had the text inline. It is terrible that it doesn't return notes with matching file names!!

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Ok, well then my question is "Why doesn't a standard search return notes with a filename that matches?" You already index it, so why not return it? How am I supposed to remember out of my thousands of notes whether something was in the note text, inside the attachment text, or the name of the attachment? Evernote should just return everything.

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Ok, well then my question is "Why doesn't a standard search return notes with a filename that matches?" You already index it, so why not return it? How am I supposed to remember out of my thousands of notes whether something was in the note text, inside the attachment text, or the name of the attachment? Evernote should just return everything.

Umm... really??? You want to go there? You've a doc called "cover letter.doc" I would have put that into an import folder. It would have been imported into EN & the title would be (drum roll, please) "cover letter.doc." This means I could have easily found it by searching:

intitle:"cover letter"

If I had a ton of cover letters, I could have sorted by creation date to find the latest one(s). If I feel the need to add any other text that I may search on, I add that to the note. It sounds to me like you are very lax on using accurate titles, tags, notebooks & keywords. If Evernote were to return "everything" (your word), you'd have to shuffle through many notes to try to find the one you were looking for. Your example is much like tossing your documents into a pile & then expecting to find the one thing you are looking for in five seconds.

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I don't think that this is such a bad idea. Currently, general search matches against note content, title and tags (the latter two can be searched specifically); adding filenames seems a reasonable expectation as well.

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The title of my note was the name of the company that I was applying for a job at. My document was clearly labelled "Cover letter", so my expectation is that my clear labelling would be returned in a search. No reason for me to duplicate the words in my note text as well, and it should not be required to do so.

But congratulations on responding in an unhelpful manner and criticising my tagging/keywording abilities. Two thumbs up!

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The title of my note was the name of the company that I was applying for a job at. My document was clearly labelled "Cover letter", so my expectation is that my clear labelling would be returned in a search. No reason for me to duplicate the words in my note text as well, and it should not be required to do so.

If you read the search grammar, you'll find using keywords & accurate titles & tags allows you to find a single document quickly out of thousands. To be clear, I would have called the document "Acme Company - cover letter yyyymmdd". And this document would have been very easy to find, with no tags & even if it was in the same notebook with thousands of other notes, even if you had cover letters for fifty other companies, assuming you used the same naming convention. Organization doesn't just magically happen.

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Yes, but will I remember in 4 years time whether a certain search term was part of the file name or part of the note? I think the standard search should just spit out all notes which contain the search term, no matter where.

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If you read the search grammar, you'll find using keywords & accurate titles & tags allows you to find a single document quickly out of thousands. To be clear, I would have called the document "Acme Company - cover letter yyyymmdd". And this document would have been very easy to find, with no tags & even if it was in the same notebook with thousands of other notes, even if you had cover letters for fifty other companies, assuming you used the same naming convention. Organization doesn't just magically happen.

Why do you waste your time putting the date in the title, when could find your cover letter using the existing search grammer, eg find that cover letter I wrote two years ago sometime in january or february "cover letter created:201001 -created:201203". It seems like alot of overhead per note.

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I'll just add that the main reason that I use Evernote is that (in most cases) I can through everything into a pile and expect to find it without being incredibly organized about it.. Of course I try to catagorize and tag as I go, however, I just as well use OneNote if I were to take (waste) the time to painstakingly catagorize, date, tag, and consistently name files as I create notes. Most of my notes are created on a mobile device.

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I am having a hard time searching with filename: For example, I have a pdf file called "Employee payroll". When I conduct the following search filename:Employee* I get nothing. Even if I do resource:application/pdf filename:Employee* I still get nothing. Am I missing something? This is usually not a big issue for me since I nearly always title my note with the file name and that's how I find them.

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I am having a hard time searching with filename: For example, I have a pdf file called "Employee payroll". When I conduct the following search filename:Employee* I get nothing. Even if I do resource:application/pdf filename:Employee* I still get nothing. Am I missing something? This is usually not a big issue for me since I nearly always title my note with the file name and that's how I find them.

i don't use the filename search very often, so i cannot say what its peculiarities are, but it does seem to work differently than expected. the only way i can ever get anything to come up is to do a wildcard search. on the mac it works for me. what client are you using?

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Search for specific filenames: filename:xyz* This will find filenames that start with "xyz".

As you know when you enter just text without any operator the Search engine will search the Note Title, Tags, as well as the Note Content. Since many, many users often attach files, have you considered adding the file name file to this search field list?

This would really add new capability in that the search would be for the Search expression to be found in EITHER the file name field OR Content OR Title OR Tag.

EDIT: I had not read the later posts when I responded to Heather's post.

Looks like a lot of us would like to include file name in the general search.

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I am having a hard time searching with filename: For example, I have a pdf file called "Employee payroll". When I conduct the following search filename:Employee* I get nothing. Even if I do resource:application/pdf filename:Employee* I still get nothing. Am I missing something? This is usually not a big issue for me since I nearly always title my note with the file name and that's how I find them.

The windows client filename: search is currently case sensitive. Are you sure you tested with capital E.

Try:

any: filename:employee* filename:Employee*

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I am having a hard time searching with filename: For example, I have a pdf file called "Employee payroll". When I conduct the following search filename:Employee* I get nothing. Even if I do resource:application/pdf filename:Employee* I still get nothing. Am I missing something? This is usually not a big issue for me since I nearly always title my note with the file name and that's how I find them.

The windows client filename: search is currently case sensitive. Are you sure you tested with capital E.

Try:

any: filename:employee* filename:Employee*

Owyn,

Once again you saved the day. You were absolutely right. It was simply a matter of case sensitivity. I capitalize all my file names but was searching with non-caps. Also, I realize that you absolutely need to use the wildcard in these searches. For example, filename:Employee* gets me directly to the note with that file. However, typing filename:Employee payroll gets me nothing even though I've typed the exact name of the file. I can't explain why that happens but I'm happy that I can at least search for direct files now. Thanks again!!

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In the future, we'll try to make as much magic happen as possible though.

Thank you DLU. That is the whole point of EN. I shouldn't have to spend time meticulously naming my notes, structuring tags, etc. just to find stuff. I agree with the general consensus in this thread that file names should be indexed and returned without having to know specific search terms. The "filename:" term should be very useful to find just those notes with a specific filename, but not required just to find notes with the words in the file name.

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Once again you saved the day. You were absolutely right. It was simply a matter of case sensitivity. I capitalize all my file names but was searching with non-caps. Also, I realize that you absolutely need to use the wildcard in these searches. For example, filename:Employee* gets me directly to the note with that file. However, typing filename:Employee payroll gets me nothing even though I've typed the exact name of the file. I can't explain why that happens but I'm happy that I can at least search for direct files now. Thanks again!!

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I have to agree that filename search should be improved. I'm not asking for much. I just want to be able to search for a portion of a filename (case insensitive) like I can in Windows Explorer or Mac OS.

- Search for specific filenames: filename:xyz* This will find filenames that start with "xyz".

(My point here is, we do index filenames, and a whole bunch of other stuff. You just have to know how to search for it.)

Hello heather,

1. Do know of any more common resource names?

2. Do know of any other search tips like that?

The search grammar document does not list the ones you just gave and I'm trying to corral as many of them as possible for a new search utility I'm working on. Also, if you know of any other commonly used contentClass or sourceApplication values other than the usual food, skitch, ink, etc. that are found in the search grammar document, please let me know. In fact, any search query tips you have that are not in the main search document are greatly appreciated. The document I am referring to is here:

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I agree with the poster that this is a pretty basic intuitive part of search that should be happening seemlessly for the user. My brain doesnt have to remember it was in a filename and is more interested in the content than the classification. Evernote can and should do this. Other search utilities do the same (including the search you run for files on any windows pc). Any software misses a few basic things and eventually the good ones go back and fill in the gap. Evernote is awesome and I am sure they'll go back and get this one that was missed.

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Does the filemame: search not search the extension of the file? In the past I thought I've done searches for filename:*docx and found any that have the .docx extension.

I've also had problems in the past using the resource: search parameter in the past because there are a few different ways that application types seem to be recognized as. This has required a few different search parameters to find all the variations. For example for Excel:

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Does the filemame: search not search the extension of the file? In the past I thought I've done searches for filename:*docx and found any that have the .docx extension.

I've also had problems in the past using the resource: search parameter in the past because there are a few different ways that application types seem to be recognized as. This has required a few different search parameters to find all the variations. For example for Excel:

If that's the case, it's probably going to return all notes with an attachment and containing words starting with "docx". The latter will include notes that have "docx" in their note content, regardless of whether the note has a "docx" attachment. I think it also returns notes containing .docx attachments as it's including the attachment names as part of its word search, and ".", being punctuation, is ignored. This may be a case of how things work on the Windows client; I haven't tried any others.

- Search for specific filenames: filename:xyz* This will find filenames that start with "xyz".

(My point here is, we do index filenames, and a whole bunch of other stuff. You just have to know how to search for it.)

Hello heather,

1. Do know of any more common resource names?

2. Do know of any other search tips like that?

The search grammar document does not list the ones you just gave and I'm trying to corral as many of them as possible for a new search utility I'm working on. Also, if you know of any other commonly used contentClass or sourceApplication values other than the usual food, skitch, ink, etc. that are found in the search grammar document, please let me know. In fact, any search query tips you have that are not in the main search document are greatly appreciated. The document I am referring to is here:

I never even saw the filename: search query modifier before your post and that's a great one!

Thanks,

Robert

Does the filemame: search not search the extension of the file? In the past I thought I've done searches for filename:*docx and found any that have the .docx extension.

I've also had problems in the past using the resource: search parameter in the past because there are a few different ways that application types seem to be recognized as. This has required a few different search parameters to find all the variations. For example for Excel:

Does the filemame: search not search the extension of the file? In the past I thought I've done searches for filename:*docx and found any that have the .docx extension.

I've also had problems in the past using the resource: search parameter in the past because there are a few different ways that application types seem to be recognized as. This has required a few different search parameters to find all the variations. For example for Excel:

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The only way in which I've gotten Search via filename to work is if the EXACT, full filename is used... not a very helpful Search, imho.

For instance, a note with an embedded PNG file called, "Little_Sister_Wedding_Cake.png" will NOT turn up in Mac v5.1.3 as a search hit if filename:Wedding is used; filename:*Wedding* does not work either. Only filename:Little_Sister_Wedding_Cake.png works?!? Why implement wildcard characters at all if they don't assist in the search? The chances that a user would remember an EXACT filename precludes any hits at all...

Evernote is a great application, but right now, especially as my work and number of notebook/notes increases, the ability to Search ALL content becomes more and more important.

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The only way in which I've gotten Search via filename to work is if the EXACT, full filename is used... not a very helpful Search, imho.

For instance, a note with an embedded PNG file called, "Little_Sister_Wedding_Cake.png" will NOT turn up in Mac v5.1.3 as a search hit if filename:Wedding is used; filename:*Wedding* does not work either. Only filename:Little_Sister_Wedding_Cake.png works?!? Why implement wildcard characters at all if they don't assist in the search? The chances that a user would remember an EXACT filename precludes any hits at all...

Evernote is a great application, but right now, especially as my work and number of notebook/notes increases, the ability to Search ALL content becomes more and more important.

Right now, the lack of intuitive Search is EN's biggest weakness...

Hi. If you use filename:Wedding* may not turn up the file. On the other hand, filename:Little* should work fine. Note that the wildcard is after the word and not before it. Because Evernote only indexes from the beginning of a word, a word in the middle (like the "drum" in "conundrum") will not be found. In this case, I believe underscores are counted as part of the word (at least, they seem to be on Mac) so "Wedding" will be not be indexed separately, and cannot be found with the Evernote search.

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I got in the habit of doing so years ago because our Microsoft servers did not play nice with the Macs on our network. Not using 'spaces' in filenames seemed to help that solve that problem. Using underscores has also been extremely helpful when posting items to FTP for clients, etc. since spaces do not translate well when emailing direct FTP links. Our email server tends to break the filenames up and clients can never figure it out after that. :\

Unfortunately, I'm of the camp where software usability should conform to the user and not the otherway around. Oh well... compromising is still in vogue! hehe

Thanks for your help.

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I got in the habit of doing so years ago because our Microsoft servers did not play nice with the Macs on our network. Not using 'spaces' in filenames seemed to help that solve that problem. Using underscores has also been extremely helpful when posting items to FTP for clients, etc. since spaces do not translate well when emailing direct FTP links. Our email server tends to break the filenames up and clients can never figure it out after that. :\

Unfortunately, I'm of the camp where software usability should conform to the user and not the otherway around. Oh well... compromising is still in vogue! hehe

Thanks for your help.

Oh, I get where you are coming from! When I began using Evernote I came from a system that indexed everything, so all of my notes would be titled something like 130531journalfriday. It was quite a pain to change from this name, which plays friendly with every operating system, to "130531 journal friday." But, nowadays, operating systems are doing better with this stuff, so I guess it was worth the initial effort.

If you are on the Mac, you have some alternatives. From outside of Evernote, Spotlight will ignore both underscore and dashes, and while it does not seem to index filenames in Evernote, if the title of your note is the same as the filename, you can find the note. On Windows, BitQwik might (if I remember correctly) finds stuff in the same fashion.

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For the benefit of the forum moderators who report customer comments to Evernote -- I strongly agree that full indexing of file names is needed. If I'm searching for all notes and documents related to my boat, I want a simple search to return all documents or pictures which include "boat" in their name, not just those with the word in the content. If I filed an invoice for electical supplies used to upgrade the helm, it might be named "boat wiring invoice" or something similar. The content will likely not include the word "boat" but I would still want a search to offer it to me for review.

I could of course take the time to tag each and every document, but the word search concept -- and Evernote as a marvelous product in general -- are supposed to relieve, not add, to the overhead burden of entering data. Similarly, the ability to run an entirely separate search on filenames, with its own set of restrictive parameters (see e.g. the prior post discussing "little_sister_wedding_cake" and trying to find "wedding"-related notes and documents) is not a reasonable alternative, and certainly not a convenient one.

If there are concerns that some uses of EN might want to exclude document names from the index, then make it a selectable option. But please at least make it an option for those of us who depend on the metatdata labeling already in our documents as part of the names they were given.

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For the benefit of the forum moderators who report customer comments to Evernote -- I strongly agree that full indexing of file names is needed. If I'm searching for all notes and documents related to my boat, I want a simple search to return all documents or pictures which include "boat" in their name, not just those with the word in the content. If I filed an invoice for electical supplies used to upgrade the helm, it might be named "boat wiring invoice" or something similar. The content will likely not include the word "boat" but I would still want a search to offer it to me for review.

I could of course take the time to tag each and every document, but the word search concept -- and Evernote as a marvelous product in general -- are supposed to relieve, not add, to the overhead burden of entering data. Similarly, the ability to run an entirely separate search on filenames, with its own set of restrictive parameters (see e.g. the prior post discussing "little_sister_wedding_cake" and trying to find "wedding"-related notes and documents) is not a reasonable alternative, and certainly not a convenient one.

If there are concerns that some uses of EN might want to exclude document names from the index, then make it a selectable option. But please at least make it an option for those of us who depend on the metatdata labeling already in our documents as part of the names they were given.

I'm afraid many of the moderators, like myself, are just users without any special powers of persuasion or notification. We a r en't employees. The developers read the forum threads, though, and they are surely aware of this longstanding request.

I don't have a strong preference either way, because there are plenty of advanced search options to catch my stuff.

In my experience, Evernote doesn't modify its search behavior. I mean that it might be exactly the same as it was back in 2008 (at least, the public api -- various additions with reminders, sharedate, etc. have been appended but not reflected in the documentation). So, I doubt this request will result in a change to the api. Personally, I appreciate the cautious approach to modifying the api, because I think Evernote already has one of the richest search features available, and I think it benefits from consistency.

My recommendation would be to familiarize yourself with the advanced search options and alternative searching apps (spotlight, houdahspot, and devonthink on the Mac). Again, my opinion carries no particular weight. I'm just making a suggestion and ultimately it is up to the developers.

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For the benefit of the forum moderators who report customer comments to Evernote -- I strongly agree that full indexing of file names is needed. If I'm searching for all notes and documents related to my boat, I want a simple search to return all documents or pictures which include "boat" in their name, not just those with the word in the content. If I filed an invoice for electical supplies used to upgrade the helm, it might be named "boat wiring invoice" or something similar. The content will likely not include the word "boat" but I would still want a search to offer it to me for review.

I'm afraid many of the moderators, like myself, are just users without any special powers of persuasion or notification. We a r en't employees. The developers read the forum threads, though, and they are surely aware of this longstanding request.

Just to amplify what GM is saying, the moderators almost never take any pains to report customer comments to Evernote staff, except in cases where we want to make sure that an issue gets seen / attended to quickly, such as a loss of data, or a customer service problem. For feature requests, we usually let Evernote read them for themselves, on their own time -- they're just as qualified as we are to read the forums, why double their traffic?

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Indeed. My feature requests, of which there are many, are all on the forums along with everyone else's. Doubling traffic is unlikely to do us any good. The best thing is to do exactly what you did: clearly explain why you want something and the specific use case.

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I think Evernote already has one of the richest search features available, and I think it benefits from consistency

GM, surely you jest!?!?!?

Evernote Search is the WORST of any DB app I have used:

Doesn't support full Boolean search

Can't negate Notebooks

Doesn't support full-text search (only full-words)

Very difficult to construct date searches

Very difficult to construct attachment searches

Inconsistent search results across platforms

Many search bugs

Search syntax (grammar) is hard to use

Offers poor management of Saved Searches

and more that I don't remember off the top of my head

I'm comparing it to other note-taking software such as Voodoopad, OneNote, nvALT, or Google Keep. I think Evernote's range of options is better. By the way, my favorite app (not necessarily notetaking) for searching is probably BBEdit, and I've encouraged Evernote in the past to beef up there searches with some of its search grammar, but ironically, despite all of its abilities, it can't search for titles at all. Database apps? Well, I imagine they would be more powerful, but that seems like another category to me, so I didn't include them in my sweeping generalization above.

As you know, I've had plenty of criticism over the years of Evernote's search, so I am well aware of its issues, but I was stressing the fact that even with its limitations, Evernote's search is still fantastic. What app on the iPad has better search capabilities? In my experience, only Evernote inexes its searches there, so only Evernote can handle an offline search of tens of thousands of notes.

My overall point, though, was to say that Evernote is unlikely to modify its existing search grammar beyond the addition of new terms for new features (reminders and so forth). If they do decide to do it, though, maybe it would help to tell them what you think is the best out there. I suggested BBEdit. What's your best search app?

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If anybody else has information like that given by coreypud please post it here.

-- roschler

Perhaps of use, but this was excerpted from the resources within Evernote. I haven't groked if the natural search suggestions can be brought up within evernote, but there were some nifty items in here I haven't seen in the forums or in the documentation. The examples get a bit more specific.

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In an environment where this detail is already indexed, something like en_test.zip or "en_test.zip" (with the quotes in case the something is treated as a special character or for explicit search including case) should return notes that have that string or filename attached and should work the same way it works "everywhere" else without the need for additional search grammar. (it has its place, it should not be needed for straight-forward searches).

I think Evernote's search is actually pretty weak and inconsistent across platforms as well (perhaps not compared to other note-taking apps, but to things that also need search like forums, blogs. PDFs, and stand alone web sites). The standard to aspire to should not be what is behind evernote but what is ahead of it.

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The fly in the ointment of that thought is that without quotes making it a literal term you run afoul of punctuation which is ignored and breaks it up into separate search terms plus the problem of spaces in file names.

Even google makes you enclose in quotes, complex phases like filenames, email addresses and the like.